1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure is generally related to passenger transportation vehicles and more particularly to systems for enhancing the passenger experience in a seat within the passenger transportation vehicle.
2. Related Art
At present, commercial air travel has become a common form of travel and competition among airlines has become very competitive. As the operating costs and appearance of low-cost airlines have increased, airlines have turned to numerous approaches for increasing revenue with the existing base number of air travelers. These approaches have included charging for or eliminating food services on flights, charging for check-in baggage and/or carry-on baggage, and creating new sub-classes of economy class seating.
An example approach has included creating an “economy plus” type of sub-class within the economy class seating that allows passengers to pay a higher airfare for certain economy class seats in the economy section (i.e., cabin) of the aircraft so as to enhance the passenger's experience on the flight. This has included increasing distance between seat rows (i.e., the seat pitch) to provide greater leg room, aisle seats, and certain window seats as “enhanced” seats within the economy cabin that have a higher airfare cost than the other seats within the economy cabin.
In furtherance of this trend, recently, some airlines have started “blocking out” center seats of triple seats as part of their economy plus offerings to provide additional comfort to passengers, as shown in FIG. 1, where blocked out seats are seats that are not offered for sale, thereby resulting in a seat remaining vacant for a given flight. In FIG. 1, a top-view of an example of an implementation of a known economy class cabin 100 (also known as the “main cabin”) in an aircraft is shown. In this example, three seats 102, 104, and 106 are shown as being blocked-out between window and aisle seats 108, 110, 112, and 114 and aisle seats 116 and 118, respectively.
The reason for this has been that the center seats in triple seat configurations are usually the last seats booked because they are generally the less attractive seats. As such, when a center seat is not booked the passengers sitting in the aisle and window seats adjacent to the center seat have extra space around them due to the empty center seat, even if both the aisle and windows seats are standard economy class seats.
There is a need for providing passengers in aisle and window seats that are adjacent to the blocked out center seats with an enhanced travel experience.